


Peace Offering

by Funkspiel



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Kidnapping, Mind Manipulation, Wishes, captured Geralt, hurt geralt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29053803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Funkspiel/pseuds/Funkspiel
Summary: Every day is the same. Geralt wakes. He takes care of his farm and his horses. He works, he eats, he goes to sleep. Dark hair against a modest pillow, plain eyes staring up at the ceiling - quick to fall asleep. But always all too aware of this strange, gnawing thought that something is wrong, something is amiss. There is something to be worried about, he is certain of it; but when he wakes, nothing is wrong. The day begins again. He takes care of his farm and his horses. He works, he eats, he goes to sleep. He is just an ordinary man with an ordinary, peaceful life... Isn't he? He's happy... Right?Then a man comes hurdling out of the field, bloodied and screaming. And nothing is quite so peaceful anymore.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Hints of Geralt/Jaskier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 83





	Peace Offering

Happiness was a fickle thing. By all accounts Geralt should be happy. He was healthy, in his prime. He owned farmland, bred horses, and enjoyed a sustainable life. He hadn't been called to war. He needed no sword to protect his property. In fact, he was tucked in a corner of the kingdom that had known nothing but peace. Yet on pleasant days when the sun carded warm fingers through his dark locks and across suntanned skin, Geralt found himself standing on his porch and frowning. Beside the wolf in his heart that had glutted itself on peace there was another wolf. A haggard creature, with gold eyes and snowy fur, demanding vigilance. A wolf with fangs sharpened by lessons from a hard life he had never known and did not understand. It said this was too good to be true. Monsters would come. Villagers would turn on him. No peace lasted forever.

Days like that, Geralt closed his eyes, took a breath, and forced one step to follow another, working until that wolf was too tired to do anything but fall resentfully asleep. The horses helped ease his mind, grounding him with velvety muzzles and nosy lips searching for treats. Time passed like that, slow and sleepy. The sun would rise, he would work, and it would set again. On and on, peaceful and content like a piece of crockery on a shelf. 

A perfect existence until it finally tipped over. 

His peace was shattered, sudden and unexpected, when a man stumbled out of his grain one day like a specter, arm mangled and pleading,  _ “Someone help me, please!” _

Spooked, the horse he was working with tried to rear back. As he hushed it, Geralt felt that scrawny wolf in his chest lift its head from thin paws as though it had been waiting for this. His heart thrummed, but Geralt felt strangely invigorated by it. He settled his horse and helped the man into the house. He sat him on a chair, opened his triage kit, and asked, “What happened? Is it still outside?”

Whether it was beast or man, the danger needed to be dealt with. The stranger was waxen from blood loss and fear, his answer carving an ominous feeling into the room. “Whatever they were, they stayed with the bodies.”

A startling list rattled off in Geralt’s mind. Stabilize the wound. Wash up, secure the horses, and grab an axe. Destroy the man’s blood trail to prevent anything from following it back to the farm. But most startling of all was the realization that for the first time he felt at home in his own skin. Though his peace was shattered, he felt whole.

* * *

_ Amber eyes flickered open, heavy and hazy. His Cat Eyes Potion had worn off. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, echoing morosely. A cave... He felt gnarled wood beneath his weary fingertips, digging into him uncomfortably. He was cradled in the base of a tree then... His skin itched and ached, and there was an unsettling sensation of being attached to something. _

_ The desire for sleep rolled over him, as vicious as the death-chill of a blizzard. He felt as though he were bleeding out, but he felt no crusted wounds, no weeping gashes. He needed to move, to break free of whatever was burrowed into his skin. _

_ ‘Stay awake,’ he ordered himself; an echo of Vesemir’s training. ‘Stay awake.’ _

_ A gentle hand – or what felt like one – brushed back sweaty white locks and murmured, “It needn’t hurt.” _

_ Unbidden, his eyes closed again, gone before he could register that the hand had felt like bark and clay and stone. _

* * *

The next day, confident that the stranger – a merchant named Gil – could travel, Geralt saddled a horse to take him to the nearest town for better medical attention than Geralt could provide. Despite how neat the stitches appeared, he was no healer. Gil had been hesitant on the road at first, clinging nervously to Geralt's back, but as time passed and nothing sprung from the forest to ravage them, Gil’s sweating eased and his fingers became less claw-like in Geralt’s shirt.

The town was too small to be a proper city, too big to be inbred. It welcomed a decent trade and hosted the occasional royal. It was known as a sleepy, peaceful place, and today was no different. As they ambled down the main road to the town’s healer, delicious smells wafted from the inn along with a strangely familiar tune. It made something itch in the back of Geralt’s head.

“Oh, I love this song. Too bad it’s not the original bard singing. Not _quite_ as good, but I can’t imagine a fellow like him performing here,” Gil said, “But y’see, maybe that’s a sign. Maybe that’s what we need right now.”

“What’s that?” Geralt asked as he dismounted carefully. The singer was too distant now to make out the words, but the melody haunted him. He patted a flat hand against his horse's shoulder only to freeze as Gil answered, “A w—h-r,” the word garbled and unintelligible, yet striking him like lightning spearing a tree and he—

* * *

_ Geralt gasped, chest heaving like a man emerging from a frigid undertow. He knew that song. The voice had been different, but he knew that song. The words lingered as though Jaskier were singing it right there. _

_ “Toss a coin to your witcher,” a voice groaned like falling timber. Fingers brushed Geralt’s temples, and in his mind something combed through memories like a breeze through willow reeds, stirring up images of cornflower eyes and merry singing. “He’s happy. Doesn’t that bring you peace? Have I not done enough? Ssh. Just a little longer now.” _

_ An urge to flee rose in him, and yet his body couldn’t answer. He knew this beast, but the name eluded him. All he could recognize was that he'd die before he’d ever have the chance to apologize. That regret sank his heart like a stone.  _

_ He succumbed once more to the dream. _

* * *

After he left Gil with the healer, Geralt mounted his horse, preoccupied by a nagging sensation that he had forgotten something important. He paused to restlessly look back toward the healer’s home before dismissing his anxiety as the result of an eventful night. He just needed to tuck into a big meal, catch up on sleep, and everything would return to normal.

He passed the inn, doors open and bustling. The bard was singing something energetic and unfamiliar now. People milled around, mindful of his horse, as he headed for the edge of town.

A sound caught him. 

Distant humming, followed by a babe’s gurgling laughter and a strange scent. That itch returned, and in his chest that scrawny wolf stirred, snarling. He reined in his spooked horse as he looked for the source. He knew that smell. That song.

The wind slowed, meadow grasses halting mid-sway. The townsfolk blurred in the streets. In a yard nearby, black and white linens fluttered on a clothesline, caught in that same eerie force. Geralt watched with bated breath, lungs aching, as the linens parted to reveal dark hair and smooth skin. A woman perched serenely upon a bench, her smiling visible behind the curtain of her hair. Tiny hands reached for her from within the bundle in her arms. The smell of lilacs dogged him though none bloomed nearby. Something sturdy and indescribable yanked at his chest, leading straight to her like a boat fastened to a dock, one useless without the other.

“...You flee my dream come the morning. Your scent: berries tart, lilacs sweet. To dream of raven locks entwisted, stormy,” she sang, notes drifting and pleasant, yet the words didn’t seem to fit. Her gaze lifted slowly to meet his, and Geralt was pinned beneath its mournful weight. “Of violet eyes, glistening as you weep.”

“Yennefer,” he said unbidden, her name slipping free as the world stilled and every sound fell away to nothing. She held his gaze, that dreamlike smile radiant on her face but her eyes, oh her eyes, pleading with him to wake.

He needed to wake up. To fight. To survive whatever had him –  _ roots, digging into his skin, leeching him slowly while he slept _ _ –  _ and return to them. Both of them. To apologize before a witcher’s end robbed him of that too.

How do you wake from a dream? You die. By the gods, how he hoped he was right. His hand reached for his dagger. Palms calloused from years of fighting and hunting, not tending to horses, clenched around the hilt. He lifted the knife. He closed his eyes.

_ “You shouldn’t have struggled, witcher.” _

He opened them to find Yennefer gone. He lowered his knife in a daze, taking in the empty village, the stillness, the silence, and finally his captor. A little girl, blue eyes too big for her face and long ashen hair like her mother’s.

_ “When I heard of the wish you made to spare the life of the insect who nearly enslaved my brother, I knew retribution was necessary. But you outsmarted my brother honorably, and so I offered you a peaceful death,” _ Ciri said. Without ever having met her, Geralt knew it was her as keenly as he knew that he was a witcher.  _ “I gave you everything you wanted. A normal life. Happiness and success for your friends. No burdens, no child surprise. You could have died happy. You still can.” _

A peaceful death. Not many witchers had the chance. Nearly none, in fact. But thinking of Vesemir, thinking of the pride and purpose he drew from training lads to survive and in taking care of Kaer Morhen, Geralt wondered what happiness truly was. Because it wouldn't feel like this.

“Tempting offer,” he admitted. Tempting to lie down and accept the dream for what it was: an easy way out. But he thought of Jaskier and Yennefer. How they looked when he pushed them both away. Of Cirilla, lost and alone. He knew what it felt like to be abandoned, to have your home and family stripped away. The importance of the people who took you in after. “Afraid I can’t.”

Ciri watched him with startling coldness.  _ “So be it.” _

Geralt gasped violently as he woke. Above him a glowing mist illuminated the cave, the tree cradling him, and the vines piercing his skin like a web of veins, sapping him slowly and steadly lest the well dry too fast. It was a Djinn. Without a master to subdue it, it was free to feast insatiably upon the lifeforce of mortals. It had used the dream to pacify him as it drank its fill. Geralt kicked himself for not realizing sooner.

_ “Remember that you chose this, Geralt of Rivia. You chose pain,”  _ it rumbled like a rockslide, so deep it rattled Geralt’s bones. A misty hand dug into the earth, and from the bedrock a dozen more hands of stone emerged to latch onto Geralt. A  _ D’ao, _ Geralt realized. A spirit of the earth rather than air like its brother. With the aloofness of a man stepping on an ant, those stone hands clenched. Geralt felt bones grind and creak. He clenched his jaw and quashed the panicked voice chanting, “I’m going to die,” as he reached for the training that Vesemir had drilled into him.

Igni would ignite vines, but not stone. Quen would crush him beneath his own barrier. There would be no influencing an Ancient with Axii. He had but one recourse left.

It was an effort to reach for his Signs, but he managed Aard. It burst the stone from his limbs. The Djinn howled. With a giant hand it tore Geralt from his prison of vines, casting him across the cavern. Something cracked as he hit the wall. Spots erupted in his vision. He slid to his ass, hands falling lank. 

The mist drew near, the image of something humanoid taking shape under writhing vines and stone. Its booming voice reached Geralt in fits and pops, ears ringing. It raised a giant fist to crush him, yet Geralt cracked an exhausted grin.

He had just enough to cast this one thing: Yrden. It seared him to his bones to do it, and for a moment he thought it would not be enough. But a purple halo gripped the Djinn fast despite the trembling of the witcher’s hands and the slowing stutter of his heart. Geralt panted as enraged screaming filled the cave, pressing in on him from all sides.

“I’ve caught you, D’ao,” Geralt wheezed. Unconsciousness loomed, but he persisted, fueled by the lulling notes of Jaskier’s song, Yennefer’s violet eyes, and a child's beseeching gaze. “I’ve bound you to this realm.”

It didn’t matter that his trap wouldn’t last long. The Djinn was bound. The honor of the Ancients would handle the rest. Around the D’ao, Yrden flickered erratically but held.

_ “Make your wishes, witcher,” _ it snarled, the sound rattling inside Geralt’s skull.

“I wish to be healed,” Geralt said, and with an angry hiss magic cocooned his body until his heart steadied and his bones reknit. He sucked in a grateful breath, his spell strengthening as the pain ebbed.

“I wish for a truce between myself and all Djinn,” he said, and this time the D’ao howled until crumbles of stone pelted the ground; but none touched Geralt. Not while he was still the Djinn's master.

Had he asked for protection, it might have harmed him in some second-hand way. Had he asked it to leave, it might have sent another in its stead. But a truce was undeniable. He was not going to die. It was a heady realization, but most of all, it revealed what he had been content to ignore for so long. His path was suddenly bright, the way made clear for him. 

“I wish to know how to find those to whom I am indebted,” he finally said. For he owed apologies to Jaskier and Yennefer, and to Ciri so much more. The Djinn ceased its howling and the air around them stilled. Geralt felt the D’ao’s heavy gaze upon him.

_ “Honorable…” _ the D’ao mused as his Yrden slipped away, and without further fanfare so did the Djinn. The tree wilted, the cavern now empty and unremarkable. The D’ao was gone.

In its place sat a certainty in Geralt’s chest that if he went west, he’d find Jaskier. That if he went northeast, he’d find Yennefer. That if he went to the epicenter of those two points, he’d find a small child with ashen hair and blue eyes, wading through the chaos of the world to find him. Like the stars above, those points rotated slowly in his heart. No matter which way he turned, he knew how to reach them. Their hearts shone in the darkness, illuminating what he hadn’t understood for so very, very long: Happiness was what you made of it.

**Author's Note:**

> A huge, huge thank you to Rospeaks and Crocrodyle, who both reviewed this piece multiple times with painstaking care to help get it to the right word count for the project. You two are angels. Thank you so much.


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